40 Unbelievable Things That Actually Happened In Airports

Distinctive and yet utterly devoid of personality, airports are places between places where the usual rules of time and space don’t apply. In fact, airports delineate international borders, despite being located nowhere near them. They are places where everyone goes but no one wants to be. Places where everything and nothing happens, and where the unbelievable is, indeed, commonplace…

40. Someone tried to transport 18 severed heads

U.S. Customs officers at Chicago’s O’Hare International seized a truly grisly cargo of 18 decapitated heads in 2013. But don’t worry, no gruesome crimes were committed. Sent from Italy, the embalmed craniums were, in fact, a medical shipment bound for a research center. Officials confiscated the heads at the airport due to improper paperwork.

39. A tiger cub was found in a suitcase

During 2010, a woman traveling from Thailand tried to smuggle a tiger cub in her suitcase. Customs officials found the 12-week-old drugged cub packed with soft toys. She had, in short, been intending to sell animal as an exotic pet in Iran. Once there, the cub would have fetched the equivalent of around $3,000 on the black market.

38. A bag label caused a major incident

In April 2018, a bag marked “Bomb to Brisbane” caused Australia’s Brisbane Airport to shut down. However, it was all an innocent misunderstanding. “Bomb” in this context refers to Bombay, the old name for Mumbai in India, where both the bag and its owner, 65-year-old Venkata Lakshmi, had been travelling from.